Unemployment Increases In Eastern Kentucky

The unemployment rate has risen over the past year in 96 of Kentucky’s 120 counties.

Data from the Kentucky Office of Employment and Training shows that the statewide unemployment rate for November was up slightly over last year at 7.7 percent, with an increase of three-tenths of a percent.

Workforce Development Cabinet Economist Manoj Shanker says the increase reflects a particularly devastating year for Eastern Kentucky communities, which have the highest unemployment rates in Kentucky.

Shanker says the coal industry has declined as natural gas fracking became more widespread.

“The coal economy has been in transition for at least 15 years. I mean, the writing has been on the wall. It became starker three years ago, when suddenly fracking took place, and we had cheap natural gas and cheap oil, through fracking. And that’s really sounded the death knell for coal, and that happened almost two years ago.” –Manoj Shanker

Shanker says because the bottom has completely fallen out of the coal industry, he expects the numbers to improve next year.

Related Content

There isn’t much for the coal industry to cheer in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Energy Outlook for 2014.

A report presented in Washington on Monday (Dec. 16) by EIA Administrator Adam Sieminski, cites the domestic production of natural gas, especially from the Marcellus Shale, a “remarkable development” that’s likely to continue into next year and beyond.

Sieminski says the Marcellus is now producing more than 13-billion cubic feet of natural gas daily, compared to two-billion in 2010.

Geology and economics are working against coal mining in eastern Kentucky and that points to a troubled future for the industry…That’s the view of Dr. Zane Selvans who is a geologist with the environmental organization Clean Energy Action.

Selvans says much of the coal still left in the Appalachian region is buried deep in the ground and requires large investments to extract it. He says that situation coupled with the growth of the natural gas business has created financial difficulty for coal companies…